The bar charts below give information about the railway system in six cities in Europe.
Sample Response
The diagrams present information on six railways in six European cities. Overall, Paris has the oldest and largest rail system while Lisbon serves the highest number of train commuters. According to the illustration, the Paris railwayParis railway was established in 1863 and it now has around 400 km of routes400 km routes. Stockholm, the second oldest and second largest train system, was built in 1900 and extends forexpands it route to around 200 km. The Lisbon and Rome train systemsLisbon and Rome train systems were inaugurated in 1927 and 1976 respectively. They have route lengths ofrail tracks of 155 and 126 km respectivelyconsecutively. Madrid has the shortest rail networkthe smallest rail tracks, only 11 km, and itthey came into existence in 1981. The Berlin train systemBerlin train system was introduced as recently as 2001 and it has a 28 km route28 km route in total. Lisbon railway systemtrain station serves the largest number of commuters per year—1,927 millionper year - almost 200 million. About three-fifthsNearly half of these train passengers travel in Stockholm while Paris, despite having the oldest and largest train system, servesfacilitates only 775 million people per year. Rome with its 144 million yearly passengers serves almost three times higher travellers than that of Madrid and Berlin train authorities.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response gives a clear overview and covers both route length and annual passenger use, with accurate chronology and most route figures. Its main weakness is numerical accuracy in the passenger chart: Lisbon is shown at 1,927 million, not almost 200 million, and Stockholm is well over half that figure. Prioritise checking units and values against both charts before forming comparisons.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The overview identifies the principal route and passenger features, and most city data are covered, but Lisbon's passenger figure is severely understated and the Stockholm comparison is inaccurate.
Verify the passenger scale and report Lisbon at 1,927 million and Stockholm at 1,191 million before comparing them with the other cities.
Coherence and Cohesion
The report progresses logically from system age and route length to passenger numbers, although the single paragraph and some loose references weaken cohesion.
Use separate paragraphs for route data and passenger data, with each comparison attached clearly to the city and measure it describes.
Lexical Resource
There is enough railway vocabulary to convey the data, but recurring collocation errors such as "expands it route," "facilitates people," and "higher travellers" reduce precision.
Use conventional reporting phrases such as "has a route length of," "serves passengers," and "three times as many passengers as."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex structures is attempted, but errors in articles, possessives, agreement, and comparison forms recur throughout the report.
Check every noun phrase and comparison for articles, plural forms, possessives, and complete structures before finalising the response.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The bar charts below give information about the railway system in six cities in Europe.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.